Review by Booklist Review
St. Mungo is the patron saint of Glasgow, and in Stuart's second novel--after Booker Prize--winning Shuggie Bain (2020)--Mungo is also a 15-year-old living in Glasgow, the youngest son of an alcoholic mother. Mungo would do anything "just to make other people feel better." He is a gentle soul living in an environment of toxic masculinity, sectarian violence, and drink, but, as we learn, he has strong reserves of strength that he himself doesn't know he possesses. Love for another young man would be risky, but when Mungo, a Protestant, falls in love with James, a Catholic, the peril is immense. This is a searing, gorgeously written portrait of a young gay boy trying to be true to himself in a place and time that demands conformity to social and gender rules. Many details are specific to Glasgow, but the broader implications are universal. Stuart's tale could be set anywhere that poverty, socioeconomic inequality, or class struggles exist, which is nearly everywhere. But it is also about the narrowness and failure of vision in a place where individuals cannot imagine a better life, where people have never been outside their own neighborhood. "I've never even seen sheep before," Mungo says at one point. Like James Kelman, Stuart has put working-class Glasgow on the literary map.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Stuart's prize-winning, best-selling debut, Shuggie Bain, ensures great enthusiasm for his second novel of young, dangerous love.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The astonishing sophomore effort from Booker Prize winner Stuart (Shuggie Bain) details a teen's hard life in north Glasgow in the post-Thatcher years. Mungo is 15, the youngest of three Protestant siblings growing up in one of the city's poverty-stricken "schemes." The children's alcoholic mother leaves them periodically for a married man with children of his own. Mungo's father is long gone, and Mungo's sister, Jodie, looks after their household as best she can. Hamish, Mungo's hooligan brother and ringleader of a gang of Protestant Billy Boys, is a constant threat to Mungo, who, tender of heart and profoundly lonely, is at the mercy of his violent moods. Even after Mungo meets the kindred James, a Catholic boy who keeps pigeons, he is overwhelmed by his self-loathing, assuming all the calamity around him is somehow his fault. He doesn't have a clue what it is he wants. All he knows is that amid the blood and alcohol and spittle-sprayed violence of his daily existence, James is a gentle, calming respite. Their friendship is the center of this touching novel, but it also leads to a terrifying and tragic intervention. Stuart's writing is stellar--a man's voice sounds "like he had a throatful of dry toast"; a boy has "ribs like the hull of an upturned boat." He's too fine a storyteller to go for a sentimental ending, and the final act leaves the reader gutted. This is unbearably sad, more so because the reader comes to cherish the characters their creator has brought to life. It's a sucker punch to the heart. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners. (Apr.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Like his debut Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, Stuart's latest is a raw depiction of Glasgow in the Thatcher years--economically depressed, endemically alcoholic, and no safe place for a gay boy just discovering his sexuality. Stuart masterfully builds tension in two timelines as he flashes between the present, where Mungo ruefully follows two adult "friends" far into the woods on a fishing trip, and the events that led Momo (Maureen, never Mum or Ma) to send her son off with these acquaintances from Alcoholics Anonymous. In the past, Mungo finds sanctuary from his drunk, absentee mother and his gang leader brother at a dovecote built by James, beautiful, blond, and one year older. Friendship grows into attraction, but Catholic James is doubly forbidden by the codes that rule Mungo's Protestant family. The situation in the present darkens to a nadir as they risk discovery and the inevitable violence it will bring. Glaswegian narrator Chris Reilly creates an authentic sense of place and characterizations that compel listeners to keep going despite the bleakness. VERDICT A flawlessly narrated Scottish dialect matched to gut-wrenching writing make this bildungsroman a nonstop listen and a must-buy.--Lauren Kage
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Two 15-year-old Glasgow boys, one Protestant and one Catholic, share a love against all odds. The Sighthill tenement where Shuggie Bain (2020), Stuart's Booker Prize--winning debut, unfurled is glimpsed in his follow-up, set in the 1990s in an adjacent neighborhood. You wouldn't think you'd be eager to return to these harsh, impoverished environs, but again this author creates characters so vivid, dilemmas so heart-rending, and dialogue so brilliant that the whole thing sucks you in like a vacuum cleaner. As the book opens, Mungo's hard-drinking mother, Mo-Maw, is making a rare appearance at the flat where Mungo lives with his 16-year-old sister, Jodie. Jodie has full responsibility for the household, as their older brother, Hamish, a Proddy warlord, lives with the 15-year-old mother of his child and her parents. Mo-Maw's come by only to pack her gentle son off on a manly fishing trip with two disreputable strangers. Though everything about these men is alarming to Mungo, "fifteen years he had lived and breathed in Scotland, and he had never seen a glen, a loch, a forest, or a ruined castle." So at least there's that to look forward to. This ultracreepy weekend plays out over the course of the book, interleaved with the events of the months before. Mungo has met a neighbor boy named James, who keeps racing pigeons in a "doocot"; the boys are kindred spirits and offer each other a tenderness utterly absent from any other part of their lives. But a same-sex relationship across the sectarian divide is so unthinkable that their every interaction is laced with fear. Even before Hamish gets wind of these goings-on, he too has decided to make Mungo a man, forcing him to participate in a West Side Story--type gang battle. As in Shuggie Bain, the yearning for a mother's love is omnipresent, even on the battlefield. "They kept their chests puffed out until they could be safe in their mammies' arms again; where they could coorie into her side as she watched television and she would ask, 'What is all this, eh, what's with all these cuddles?' and they would say nothing, desperate to just be boys again, wrapped up safe in her softness." Romantic, terrifying, brutal, tender, and, in the end, sneakily hopeful. What a writer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
